by Rosemary Feurer
University of Illinois Press, 2006
eISBN: 978-0-252-05313-9 | Cloth: 978-0-252-03087-1 | Paper: 978-0-252-07319-9
Library of Congress Classification HD6508.F35 2006
Dewey Decimal Classification 331.88097709041

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
District 8 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) developed a style of unionism designed to confront corporate power but also act as a force for social transformation in their community and nation.

Rosemary Feurer examines the fierce battles between these Midwestern electrical workers and the bitterly anti-union electrical and metal industry, Exploring the role of radicals in local movement formation, Feurer reveals a "civic" unionism that could connect community and union concerns to build solidarity and contest the political economy. District 8's spirited unionism included plant occupations in St. Louis and Iowa; campaigns to democratize economic planning; and strategies for national bargaining that elected officials inevitably branded as part of a communist conspiracy. Though destroyed by reactionaries and an anticommunist backlash, District 8 molded a story that tells another side of the labor movement's formation in the 1930s and 1940s, and can inform current struggles against corporate power in the modern global economy.


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